You fought through all of that and nef lands and things got hairy in that people were excited, hope the tanks danced properly and that no one got agro so he turned and killed 20 people in 2 secs...lol it was chaos and soo much fun

---------- Post added 2013-06-19 at 04:33 PM ----------

I do not think any of that was unreasonable and it did not takes months to replace anyone. Most guilds had ongoing recruitment & training, swapping out of people who did not need gear off a particular boss etc

Yet, little of his explanation of old raids has to do with 'strategy' in the conventional gaming sense, which is the focus of your thread.

You just barely mentioned the most important aspect of the fight, which is the class "call-outs" as you call it.
THAT was the main mechanic of the fight. Every class gave him a special ability or was affected by some effect, like paladins BoP'ing him, mages being polymorphed, warriors getting forced into berserker stance, druids forced into cat form, shamans would drop totems that buffed him, priests would damage instead of healing, hunters would have their weapon durability completely removed, rogues being shadowstapped to under him, warlocks summoning uncontrollable demons...

it was complete chaos

The class calls were wildly fun but in no way hard. Once my scrub guild got past phase 1, we killed him in a few attempts. The complexity of that fight was handling the colors of the week. This got negated by battle shout tanking though as you just aoe'd everything instead.

If you compared Nefarian to today's raids every class call would be used at once. So handling the overhealing of tanks, no dps from hunters, warlocks running to the corners to hide their infernals, burning totems, priests limited to certain spells and druids unable to heal.

Today we have complex rotations coupled with complex mechanics which also involve a *lot* of running around. No more are the days of applying a dot and spamming another attack for 15 seconds. Priests using either prayer of healing or circle of healing. Shamans using nothing but low ranked chain heal. Tell me this was harder?

I do not get why many believe Vanilla raids were so easy, going through it at the time (and with 40 people), it was a challenge. The Nefarian fight still remains one of my favourites of all time. Remember also that people who tired to use the heal threat strat screwed themselves eventually when it was adjusted. Also the respawn timer. Add in the trash pulls in BWL were pretty cool as well ( I thought) Tanks had to really manage their threat and dps classes had to manage it as well, it was a real aspect to fights. As a Horde warrior at the time, stance dancing was a real skill on this fight too. Of course someone will remember it differently, like usual.

Anyone recall the basic strats to the fight? This still remains one of the best encounters in the game (IMO) and used every class to their fullest, same with teamwork.

Like this fight? Hated it? Best and worst memories of it? I think it still holds up well.

The basics below:
===================================================

Phase 1

To activate the Encounter a person must walk up to Nefarian's throne and talk through what he says. Upon completion of this he says "Let the Games begin." From here, Nefarian is invulnerable, and walks amid the raid randomly shadow bolting, mind controlling people and casting fear on random targets. The room begins to flood with Drakonids at the same time.
Phase 1 of the fight consists of defeating the drakonids.

There are 6 types of drakonids that spawn. In every Nefarian encounter you will fight Chromatic Drakonids; the largest and toughest drakonids. Fortunately they spawn in far fewer number than the other colors. In addition to the Chromatic Drakonid, 2 other random colors of Drakonids will spawn as well. One color will spawn from the southern door, and one color will spawn from the northern door. Colors are fixed for each instance: if Nefarian is attempted multiple times before the instance resets, the same color combinations will appear.

Different colors of Drakonids have different special abilities and are resistant to different schools of magic. Note that, unlike some other Blackwing Lair mobs, these Drakonids are not particularly vulnerable to any magic. Below is a list of their colors and associated abilities / resistances:

The Drakonids can be killed by either AoE attacks or direct damage and aside from Chromatics, they do not hit very hard and do not have a lot of health.

Doorway Method

Raid is split up into groups so that DPS is split up as evenly as possible. The easiest way to do this is start with a Physical assist train on one side (Hunter, Rogue, Warrior) with nuker/AoE classes (Mage, Warlock, Paladin, Shaman) on the other, with healers and tanks being split evenly. At least 2 to 3 tanks need to be designated per side to be able handle Chromatic Drakonids. Taunt moves should be enough to hold mobs, but any that leak should be the primary target, followed by a designated assist target.
Ranged DPS classes (Mage, Warlock, Hunter) and healers should be positioned max range from either door so that they can switch sides quickly. Hunters can be moved between sides to tweak the DPS balance. Hard, steady DPS is crucial so if one side is waiting for spawns, people need to switch over; the non-chromatic drakonids shouldn't live past taunt duration while chromatics have significantly more health and need to be "sunder" tanked.

ALWAYS AOE the Red Drakonid group. (Warlocks DoT with Corruption/CoA then Shadowbolt.)
ALWAYS Assist-train the Blue Drakonid group.
DPS is preferred on Black Drakonid groups, unless you get Black/Blue.
AOE is preferred on Bronze Drakonid groups, unless you get Red/Bronze.
Green Drakonid groups are governed by the other color that appears with them.
For Black combos, Warlocks should be switched off with Hunters so that they can make full use of their moves. Blue doesn't impact +hit/-resistance Mages too badly but it might help to add Hunters to assist train mobs.
Red and Bronze drakonids should be handled primarily by casters and only melee with called out healers.

Green drakonids are the least harmful so this side should be composed mainly of dispellers and classes that wouldn't do versus the other color.

Phase 2

After killing 42 Drakonids, no more will spawn (you still have to kill all the others that are up), and Nefarian lands on the balcony in Dragon Form. This is the beginning of Phase 2 of the encounter. Before landing he will cast an AoE (ignores LoS) Shadow Flame on the entire raid. This version of the spell does about 1000 shadow damage and is completely resistible. Previously, every member of the raid must have been wearing an Onyxia Scale Cloak to avoid the fatal DoT from the Shadow Flame (frost mages could use their Ice Block ability and paladins could use their Divine Shield ability to avoid the Flame without the cloak.).

By now most of the drakonids should be dead. Move your raid to this area and start DPSing him down, from here on out its simple damage dealing with a few twists. It should be noted that, if your raid attempts the aoe version of phase one and stays near the throne, you can stand BEHIND the throne and NOT be hit by Shadow Flame. It is the only place in the room that has this property (and is therefore was the only way for someone without a Cloak or immunity shield to live).

He has all the abilities of normal dragons: Conical breath attack (shadow based), cleave, and bellowing roar. He also does Veil of Shadow on the target nearest to the center of his hitbox. Nefarian casts an AOE fear roughly every 30 seconds. The ground shakes immediately before this occurs, giving the MT time to stance dance and use berserker rage. Alternatively, have any priests cast fear ward on the MT. It's worthy to note that his fear has limited range of about 35 yards, so ranged DPS and healers can completely avoid it by proper positioning. Approximately every 25–35 seconds he will "call out" a specific class

Phase 3

When his health reaches 20% he will resurrect all the Drakonids killed in Phase 1 as "Bone Constructs". They hit fairly hard but do not have a lot of health, so they are relatively easily AoE'd to death. It is advisable to move AoE groups into position where the Drakonids were originally killed prior to reaching 20% HP to ensure their swift elimination, and to avoid healers getting swarmed. It is also advisable to wait for an appropriate call, where you don't lose any healing. Since the Bone Constructs are classified as Undead they are vulnerable to Paladins' Holy Wrath, which should be used in conjunction with other AoE sources.

An effective technique for Paladins is: 1.) BoP a Mage 2.) Divine Shield 3.) Holy Wrath 4.) Use Stratholme water (if you brought some along). This would be an ideal time for the non-MT Warriors to pop Shield Wall and Challenging Shout in a staggered order to ensure adds do not attack healers (assuming these abilities are not on cooldown from Phase 1). Corrupted Shaman Totems from the Shaman class call will affect the adds; it is advisable to have those totems killed before the adds spawn. Note that if your computer isn't top of the line you will have extremely low FPS when the drakonids are resurrected, so make sure you turn your graphics down and do anything else you can to increase performance before the fight.
After this he continues to cast his class debuffs up till he dies.

Nefarian encounter can be reattempted any number of times, however, it takes 15 minutes for him to reset after a wipe (as of patch 1.9.3). Prior to this patch, once the battle had progressed to Phase 2, and the remaining Drakonids had all been killed, the gates would never re-open. Therefore, a Soulstone or other wipe prevention must have been in place, or the battle could not be re-attempted until the instance had reset completely. Nefarian would still respawn after 15 minutes.

Most of the challenge to raiding in vanilla was a result of terrible game design and developers that didn't quite know what they wanted raiding to be yet. No one said they weren't hard but in comparison to newer raids yes they are simpler. There is no denying that and no amount of spin is going to change it.

I sort of agree, but I'm not sure what else to use as an example from MOP. I've only played Classic and MOP, so can't really point out anything from previous expansions. The reason I tend to use Durumu's maze as an example is because when I asked the forums to name me a mechanic from MOP which they believed good Classic players would have a hard time dealing with, Durumu's maze was the mechanic pointed out to me. Mind you, they even went so far as to use the post-nerf version of the maze as their example, which surprised me even more. It felt more like the forums were just mindlessly bashing Classic players at that point more than anything.

I think people really mean to bash Classic mechanics more than players. But well, it's a forum so we all end up bashing each other eventually :P

Maybe a better example would be the Opportunistic Strike mechanic on Will. There's quite a few different kinds of mechanics that didn't exist in Vanilla simply because they only developed the tech for it recently.

But I think the biggest difference is simply the sheer number of mechanics a fight can have in MoP versus Vanilla. Naturally, as a game gets older it needs to get more complex. If you went back in time to your Vanilla days and played it you'd probably find it all easy because you have years of experience now, and most of the game isn't new to you anymore.

These people just can't accept that their holy and sacred vanilla wasn't the end all be all of mmos.

---------- Post added 2013-06-21 at 02:27 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Grogo

Nah, I have seen posts a million times on how easy Vanilla raids were. Regardless, people do not put in context of what else were factors on boss fights besides the mechanics itself.

Ok...and? Even easy raids can have strategy and as pointed out no one has said otherwise.

---------- Post added 2013-06-21 at 02:29 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Archangel Tyrael

More mechanics doesn't mean they are harder or more complex.

Many of the guilds that do heroics today couldn't complete 25 man raids (the upper ones, that is, t5 and above) at the time they were relevant.

Are you kidding me right now? You mean the guilds that got world firsts during TBC weren't able to clear those raids? What?

---------- Post added 2013-06-21 at 02:33 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Grogo

I agree and disagree. It could be clunkier but in a good way, I miss that threat is really no longer a factor and so forth. Raids now can be more complex with too many phases, i do like the simple in concept but hard to master fights.

How can clunky ever be a good thing? What the fuck. This has gone from nostalgia to pure insanity.

What is more fun about attacking two seconds earlier? There is really no difference.

The only thing that happens now is that people annoy the tanks by pulling before them because no one thinks about threat unlike during Vanilla/TBC.

The old way lead to having a somewhat bad tank leading to DPSers standing there twiddling their tumbs waiting for the tank. I remember many times when the 2nd tank in my old guild (a warrior) was tanking Prince Malchezzar and I was just standing there for long times waiting for his threat until phase 2 where I would use invisibility to dump the threat I had before I could start doing some proper DPS. Back then your DPS was throttled by the tank, which got boring real fast. Threat managment wasn't a good gameplay mechanic. The way it is now you might occasionally get a overaggro at the pull but a quick yelling at the DPS usually fixes that for the next pull.

In the old days a bad tank would consistently make DPSers miserable. Nowadays stupid DPSers will occasionally make the tanks life miserable. I much prefer the current system, although it has flaws for sure.

Vanilla raiders were much much worse at "dancing" than raiders of today. I already posted a link to a Thaddius vid. Heigan was also a hardcore raiding boss in vanilla. And both of those are pretty basic movements even easier than Duru maze.

The hardest "movement" fight in vanilla was 4 Horseman. And that was much less dancing and more following a timed path around the room.

Today I'm much worse than back in classic, yet attenuation was still just a flavor mechanic to me. So if attenuation was a bit of a joke to me now in my late 30s, you can be sure it would have been even easier for me to deal with 6 years ago, back when I was actually a decent gamer. It would have been even easier for players better than me, of which there were plenty.

Durumu's pre-nerf maze was just as much of a joke. Neither of those mechanics are easier or harder to deal with than Thaddius'. The dancing itself on Thaddius was never hard, it was just a mechanic that made the encounter fun. Even with 40 man groups I never heard of a guild that took a long time to master it, although obviously it's more likely to have a player lose focus in a 40 man raid than it is in a 25 man raid.

As to why there was an addon? Today there are arrows for Attenuation and there is even an entire addon for the ridiculously simple dance on the Sha of Fear platforms. I know for a fact the top guilds today can easily kill both Sha of Fear and Zor'lok without these addons, just as I know for a fact that the top guilds back in classic easily killed Thaddius without an arrow addon. The addons were used simply because someone made them, in which case there was little reason not to use them. It's the same shit today.

So no, it wouldn't have been remotely hard for good video gamers 6 years ago to deal with attenuation. I'm a living example of this, and I was fairly fucking average as far as Naxxramas level raiders went. I also didn't play a single expansion between classic and MOP, so I'm as good of an example as you'll get.

I remember as a Hunter, Razorgore was my sworn enemy. There were many times I wanted to just miss raiding on the days we went into BWL. I just remember kiting forever and ever and ever through most of BWL. It was awful. Then farming for NR gear. I hated it so much. We didn't get DKP for doing world bosses with my guild, so I never wanted to go for them to get NR gear. Then I had to grind out rep after rep for AQ and Nax. I hit revered then spent the gold on mats and the attunement because I was just so sick of doing Strath UD. Whenever we weren't raiding, we were in Strath UD farming rep to get into Nax. Then we finally got enough folks that we could start clearing Nax and holy hell, the gear requirements and difficulty spike was atrocious. T_T

I never got the 2h sword from ZG until near the end of Vanilla either. I always lost it or got ninja'd. I quit one guild on the spot when they brought in a different hunter on Jin'do and gave it to him when I won the loot roll. I was infuriated as I'd been in there for hours and hours wiping on stupid crap with the guild, then they brought in this other hunter and gave him the sword. That guild fell apart within a week of that as well. All it took was myself and about 5 other core raiders to follow me and quit them to kill that guild. We ended up joining another guild and were the 2nd best Horde guild on the server through Vanilla. The guild kind of fell apart during TBC, though understandably as the gear gap between Vanilla and TBC was huge. We were replacing gear we worked on getting for months and months within hours of stepping into TBC. A lot of people quit playing then. I took an 8 month break myself.

Vanilla wasn't the end all be all of MMO's or raiding. It was, however, the beginning of the biggest paid MMO to date.